The second series following the Child Genius of the Year competition was
filled with eye-popping soundbites, says Charlotte Runcie

The producers of Child Genius (Sunday, Channel 4), the series following children taking part in British Mensa’s Child Genius of the Year competition which has returned for a second run, must have been thrilled when they found Shoshana Garfield. The mother of gifted nine-year-old Aliyah, Garfield assured us that she herself was also a genius.

“We’re all three of us geniuses,” said Garfield of herself, her daughter and her partner. “And that’s not bragging, that’s just the way it is.”

It was one of several eye-popping sound bites to emerge during the first round of the competition. “It feels really nice to be better than other people,” said Rubaiyat, 11, who did degree-level mathematics in his spare time. Eight-year-old Tudor was taking part in the competition along with his older sister Hazelle, both of them beneath the steely gaze of their parents. Under the weight of his father’s enormous expectations, Tudor’s shoulders began to look very fragile.

Garfield remarked briskly that her daughter was not as gifted as she was herself, but with the right programme of coaching, study and juice dieting (Aliyah’s most hated juice was the kale), she could achieve great things. As a break from study, Aliyah was allowed to practise doing pull-ups using a bar installed in a doorway at home.

One of the less scary children was eight-year-old Jocelyn, who could sing “Old MacDonald” in Latin but was home-schooled in a hippyish curriculum that involved lots of playing on the beach. She was eliminated in the first round, but her parents still told her they were very proud.

This documentary is not going to find the cleverest child in the country, but that’s not really the point. Like the first series, it’s just a compelling and sober warning about the dangers of introducing a timer to family holiday games of Scrabble. And for those of us whose childhood achievements mostly involved sticking crayons up our noses, that was very reassuring.